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This Los Angeles Times story explains that almost 4,000,000 Californians live in areas with no State Senate representation, due to redistricting and the fact that California, like most states with four-year State Senate terms, doesn’t elect the entire State Senate in years following redistricting.

A few states that don’t normally elect more than half their State Senators in any given year make exceptions for years after redistricting, and elect the entire State Senate. And many states have two-year State Senate terms.

“Taxation without representation”, as a political principle, is important in U.S. history, but I don’t think it was ever put into any state constitution or the U.S. constitution either. And if it were, our treatment of residents of the District of Columbia and the various territories would be unconstitutional.

News of thins sort is important because it is impossible to defend. Most would just others not think about it or acknowledge it as the best way; just dismiss without response.

I think of the voters or would-be voters who if they understood how an election cycle just skipped over them insofar as their representation in the upper chamber of the state they’re registered in is concerned, well, they’d probably have a problem with that.

#4 The article was too forgiving – referring to it as a “quirk”, “it can’t be helped”, “everyone has a voice even though you have this anomaly”, and interviewing senators about how they were going to serve their pseudo-constituents.

What they are missing is that 10% of the voters were last able to vote for a senator in 2008; and won’t be able to vote again until 2014, after a two-year lapse in representation.

Shows the “quirk”. White areas have “deferred representation” and citizens have had a senator “assigned” to them. Other areas are “accelerated”. Voters in these area have two senators they voted for. In the portion of the old SD-4 that was moved into an odd-number district, voters were able to vote for both senators in November (the old SD-4 had a special election because its senator had resigned to run for Congress, and they had been placed in the new SD-1 which had a regular election for a 4-year term).

Under the One Man One Vote decisions of the 1960s (Baker v Carr; Reynolds v Sims, etc.). The SCOTUS determined that if the vote of one voter was worth 20% more than another it was a violation of equal protection. But in this case, 10% of the voters have a vote of zero value.

It is trivial to handle this situation. In Texas, all senators run after redistricting. Once the senate is organized, they draw lots. 1/2 the senators are given an initial 4-year term, and their district will have elections in 2016 and 2020. The last election will be a 2-year term. The other half will be given an initial 2-year term, with the district having an election in 2014 and 2018, both for a 4-year term.

Illinois has a slightly different system, with senators drawn into 3 classes, serving terms of 4-4-2; 4-2-4; and 2-4-4.